SEO Tip: SEO Ready Themes

You will see a number of themes that point out they are SEO ready, which means that the format of the pages has been designed to fit in with what Search Engines want to see as closely as possible. This can be an advantage, but it does not mean that themes not labeled as SEO ready will perform badly.  So treat this option as a bonus, in early stages and don’t get hung up on it. We will look at installing some plugins to aid SEO in later lessons, and discuss how a page should be laid out so you can make you own informed choices about how to make you design more search engine friendly.

Info: Widgets

Many themes are widget enabled, which means you can use any of the wide selection of widgets available. Widgets are small blocks of code that add a feature to your blog so you can fully customize the content you display in your blogs columns without needing to edit the themes by hand or know any complicated code. We will look at widgets in more detail in the next lesson.

Activate a Theme For Your WordPress Blog

Adding a theme is very simple, from your WordPress Admin Page, you click the down arrow to the right of “Appearance” and the Themes button lets you browse through the installed themes and activate one you like at the press of a button. Under each themes details you will see two options, Activate and Preview. As you might expect, Preview shows you how the theme will look without making any changes to your site, and when you find one you like, clicking Activate switches to that theme for your whole blog. Alternatively if you have installed you own version of WordPress you can install one of the hundreds or even thousands of themes available for free on the Internet, selecting the “Add New Themes” option from the Appearance box takes you to the theme browser that lets you search through the WordPress Theme archive, and add as many as you want so they become available from the Theme options we just looked at, or if you have downloaded a theme from the Internet you can upload the .zip file using the “upload” option, just under the pages title.

Understanding Your New Blog

Once you actually have a blog you are faced with a lot of new information that can seem a little overwhelming at first glance, luckily there is very little you actually need to know to get started and you can start with just a few simple steps ignoring the bits you don’t understand until you are ready for them.

Info: Posts, Entries and Blogs

There are number of different terms used interchangeably when you add a new item to your blog, most commonly you will see it referred to as writing a post, or writing an entry, some times prefixing with a blog so it becomes blog post and blog entry. In the early days blog was used to describe the entry it’s self, as a singular term but common sense has prevailed in favor of more meaningful terms.

Info: What are Themes?

Themes control how your blog looks to the people reading it. Everything from colours and fonts to the layout of the columns and menus, to more advanced options specific to an individual theme. You can change your theme as often as you want and the actual content (Your posts and comments) remains them same. We’ll look at selecting a theme in the next lesson.

Info: What are Plugins?

Plugins are extra features that you can install on your blog to extend its functionality. Some of them work in the background and do things like protect you from spam, where others let you easily drop extra content to your blog like linking to other sites like Facebook or Twitter. In later lessons we will introduce plugins one or two at a time to help you evolve your blog. If you use a free blog provider they will give you a preinstalled selection of plugins but you can not install your own.

Info: What is a Blog Feed, RSS Feed or Atom Feed

Your blog feed provides a way to expose what is been written on your blog to a wider audience using tools that read the feed know as Feed Aggregators. WordPress automatically generates your feed for you so you don’t need to worry about that for now, and we will look at how you can use feeds from other sites to make keeping up to date on other blogs easier, or display content from other blogs on your own.

What Makes You a Blogger

The fact you now own a blog in it’s self makes you a blogger, but there is more to been a blogger then simply posting away on your own small corner of the Internet, the main advantage of blogging is connecting with other people who share a common interest, and reading other blogs, commenting on them, and linking from your blog to others all form vitial connections across the Internet and help you establish an identify on the Internet.

Blogger Tip: Don’t Just Link, Add Value

Linking to other blogs when you see an entry you like is a great way to bring people to your site as each mention creates a Trackback, however to keep people interested rather then simply saying “I like this” you should offer your own thoughts going beyond what the original covered, or even disagreeing so the conversation extends between the two blogs and over time grows your network of readers who see a benefit in reading your posts.

Info: What is a Trackback?

When you reference another blog on yours, your blogging software with automatically let the blog you are talking about know you have mentioned it. The process is called a Trackback, it happens automatically so you don’t need to worry about it too much just yet.

The Blogsphere

You’ll see the word Blogsphere used frequently as you learn more about blogs and blogging, as you might be able to guess it refers collectively to blogs, the bloggers who write them and extends to related technologies and sites such as Technorati or Twitter.

Info: What is Technorati?

You’ve already seen the web site Technorati mention a few times by this point, so you might be wondering what they do. They offer a blog specific search service and community tools to help bloggers promote their blogs and are a very popular way to bring traffic into your blog. We’ll look at setting yourself up on Technorati in a latter lesson.

Info: What are Social Networks and Social Media?

Social Media and Social Networks are the terms used to describe not just the Blogsphere but any site or technology that enables people to form communities on the Internet and beyond using mobile phones and devices like the iPhone or games consoles with community features. Facebook, Myspace, Flickr and StumbleUpon all fall under the category of Social Networks.

Blogger Tip: Developing Your Personal Brand

One of the topics you will see talked about a lot as you expand your reading about running blogs is the idea of creating a personal brand, this means maintaining a level of consistency between different Social Networks so at a basic level doing things like using the same Usernames on each site and using the available tools to cross link from one site to another networking your various Internet identities together.

This is the most complex part of running a blog, so I’ve tried to make it as easy as possible and will be on hand to offer any additional help where I can.

Info: A Short Video About Blogging In Plain English

About SEO Tips: SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the term that refers to making your blog or website easier to be found by search engines like Google, we’ll look at the various things you can do to make your blog more visible along the way.

SEO Tip #1: Focus On One Topic

When you are picking a name for your first blog it’s important to keep in mind that your blog will perform better if you focus on one topic, it will also help if you include keywords in your domain name, so if you are writting about your widgets you might name the site “Mary’s Widget Thoughts” with a domain of marys-widgets.com or marys-widgets.wordpress.com

Decision: Do You Want A Blog or A Web Site?

If you are looking at creating a professional pressence on the Internet, blogs can be a good starting point to build up a community of people who will look to you for information and then go on to become customers because they trust your personal brand. In fact, blogs are websites, just with a commonly accepted structure that can be evolved as you find your voice on the Internet.

Info: What is WordPress?

WordPress is the software installed on your web host (Or provided for you) that makes everything work, from a readers point of view it makes no difference what software your blog runs on, but as a blogger the choice effects what themes you can pick, what plugins are available, and what the interface to write posts and manage your site looks like. I’ve picked WordPress because I think it’s an Awesome platform and have been happily using it for years.

Right, now it’s time to get your blog set up on the Internet, I’ve detailed below two different ways to do this, one that is free, but less felixiable and not recommended for a profesional solution, and one that costs a little bit of money up front but will give you full access to the advanced features in later lessons.

Method One: start with a free blog on Wordpress.com

Go to the WordPress Sign Up Form, and just fill out the short form with your details. Pick a username you will remember, and try to create a strong password as indicated by the bar under the password entry.

Then on the next page select the domain(Web page address) and title for your blog. As mentioned in the SEO Tips above, try to include a keyword in the domain and focus on one subject.

Finally enter your name and a short bio and save the details.

Now go check your email and you should have a message from WordPress with your account activation.

Once your account is activated by clicking the link in the email you received, use the Log In option so you can start using your blog.

Pros: Quick, Free, Good choice of themes and plugins ready to use, Updated to latest WordPress versions automatically.

Cons: Limited to the provided themes and plugins. Can not be integrated with your own website. Ads will be displayed on your site.

When you sign up for WordPress they will send you an email with a “WordPress API Key” – This code is needed to activate the anti-spam plug in we will use in later lessons when you host your own WordPress blog so there is no harm in signing up just to have a quick play with and using it as a playground out side the blog you keep for more professional reasons.

Method Two: Host Your Own Blog On Dreamhost

First of all, if you want to sign up for Dreamhost you can use the discount MOJOPROMO to get $10 off , 20% extra disc and an additional domain name. Or use MOJOHALF to get a year’s hosting half price. (I also have a very limited number of special discount codes that give you $150 off 5 years hosting, or $200 of 10 years, if you want one get in touch directly.) If you are registering for a new account remember to keep in mind the SEO tip about including key words in your domain.

Onece registered, or if you are already a dreamhost customer go to your Dreamhost control panel, click on the domains tab on the left hand side, select “Manage Domains” and use the “Add New Domain /Sub-Domain” button to add the details of your domain to be hosted.

Once that’s done, you can go to the “Goodies” tab on the left, and select “One-Click Installs” and then select the Advanced Option, make sure WordPress is selected, select your domain in the “Install To Option” and in the bottom section about databases select the “Create a new database” option, create a New Host Name, New Database name and New User – Write down the details as you might want them in the future. Then click “Install it for me now…” and wait for the email telling you it’s completed to arrive.

The email will link to the wp-admin/install.php page – You should follow the link and give your blog a title, and enter your email address, then check the box so that your blog appears in Google and Technorati before proceeding to the next page by clicking “Install WordPress” button. On the next page copy the password, and click Log In.

Once logged in, you will see a red prompt to take you to your profile page where you can update your details, and change your password to something you will remember.

Pros: Gives you full control of every aspect of your blog’s presentation, let’s you install any plugin you want, lets you modify themes with custom code. No Ads.

Cons: More complex to get started. Some costs involved.

Method Three: Host Your Own, Install Your Own

You can install WordPress anywhere you have hosting, so if you want to host on a different provider, use a domain name you already have, or install by hand it doesn’t make much difference other then all screen shorts and work flows will be tests on my own Dreamhost account, so I can be sure that works. But the advantage of an open source system like WordPress means it can be installed anywhere you want, and blogging is all about networking and reaching people anywhere they happen to be.

Pros: If you know what you are doing and what you want, you can get it.

Cons: Slightly more complex then the described Dreamhost approach. No additional support on the hosting side of things in this course.

And that’s this lesson done; You should now have a fully working blog, and from here onwards it actually gets a lot easier. I’ve tired to make this as clear as possible but comment below if you find any issues and I’ll do what I can to help or clear up this post and keep it up to date.

Disclaimer: If you use the Dreamhost discount code I also make a small amount of money.

But there are still a lot of technical functions under the hood that are hard to discover for people who have better things to do with their time them explore their blog options, and who might be worried about breaking things. Plus there is a whole world of social media beyond just setting up your blog and hoping people find it that can be hard to break into at first.

So rather then deal with people one to one, as I already have a couple of people involved in the conversation I am opening up my Blog School as a way to present the information about starting a blog I am putting together, and allowing people who join in late to pick up on past classes. Of course, much if not all of this information is already available on the Internet and I’ll reference that as much as makes sense, and while it will be presented as an on-line course I will give personal assistance to people as they go along as much as possible.

The course will start out with the basics, offering advice on the initial set-up and hosting options, registering a domain if required and picking a theme, leading on to how to post a blog entry and get it seen by others, promoting your blog, a look at other social media sites like Twitter and common terms people use, getting stats from your blog so you can see who is visiting, and exploring common plug-ins so you can extend the features of your new blog.

I’ll also cover some more advanced topics over time like editing themes and creating new opens.

Some of the topics might seem very technical at first, and you won’t need to follow all of them, so I’ll keep a clear separation between the different levels, and I will be on hand if people need additional help.

Classes will be posted every 2 to 4 days at first with the first on Saturday 13th June 2009.